› added 4 years ago

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TIL "ball lightening" has no explanation despite being seen by 3% of people. Reports describe it as floating orbs of light that sometimes enter people's homes.

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M71x7 TIL some bacteria evolved a needle-like structure for injecting other cells with special proteins. Type III secretion system , as it is called, is still poorly understood and we don't fully know how bacteria make them and how the needle itself works.
v1PrR TIL when George Westinghouse fell into financial problems and asked Nikola Tesla for relief from the royalties Westinghouse agreed to, Tesla tore up the contract that would bring him millions. "I'm not interested in money, I'm interested in leaving something behind for the humankind".
lRrN TIL that during WWII American soldiers in the Pacific theatre would use the word ‘lollapalooza’ to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people often pronounce the letter L as R
9wOwG TIL about a man named John Martin who tried to sail from Alaska to China to visit his wife and son in an 8-foot dinghy, but instead washed up in Russia where he was later held for four months awaiting deportation
jNWEM TIL It became the custom for rich people and fighting men like the Norman soldiers, whose ways of life put their souls in such great jeopardy, to pay monks to do the praying they were too busy to do for themselves.